I didn’t want to write this kind of thing. God, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s the kneejerk, moralistic, holier-than-thou, reactionary scold of a sports column right after something terrible happens to a sports figure away from the arena. It’s cheap, it’s too easy and 99.999999 percent of the time, the columnist on his/her high horse doesn’t give a bleep about that sports figure or what happened. Doubly awful is the reactionary scold of a column bathed in false, weepy, violin-string manipulative pathos.
And they are always the kinds of columns that win some kind of worthless journalism award too.

So forgive me. But the people around the game of hockey, and this includes the media too probably, need to come to together in some way to try to figure out how to put a stop to a certain class of player from wanting to do harm to themselves when their playing days are either numbered or over. Dramatic sounding? A little moralistic and preachy? Maybe.

But even for shock-proof people like myself, the thought of Wade Belak doing what he apparently did today in a Toronto hotel room sent a ripping volt through the system. He was the third NHL tough guy to die this summer, all from apparently self-inflicted, troubled means. Once is a fluke, twice a coincidence and three times is an unmistakable trend.

Fighters in hockey and professional wrestlers have sometimes been lumped in together, but the hockey players had mostly, to this point, avoided the same comparison to the many tragic, self-destructive ends to many wrestlers’ lives in recent years.

But Belak’s death will almost certainly bring about changes to fighting’s role in the NHL, and/or significant steps to address mental – not just physical — health hazards that come to the role known as hockey enforcer.

In this Jan. 15, 2010, file photo, Nashville Predators' Wade Belak, right, an enforcer who had played with five NHL teams before retiring in March, has been found dead in Toronto, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011.

I just saw this news, and immediately felt a punch to the gut. Former Avalanche player Wade Belak, a first-round draft pick of the Quebec Nordiques in 1994, who played with the Avs in parts of three seasons from 1996-99, has reportedly been found dead in a Toronto condominium.

We don’t know yet how this happened, but foul play was not suspected. I really hope it wasn’t what we’re all thinking, because the Wade Belak I and many other people knew was a cheerful, friendly guy who seemed to have a lot of other good stuff going on besides being a pro hockey player for a long time.

Belak was a highly-touted kid coming out of junior as a defenseman, who had the misfortune of trying to crack an Avalanche team that was power-packed with star talent. He was the first draft pick in the new regime of Nordiques GM Pierre Lacroix at the Hartford Civic Center in the ’94 draft. He played some with the Avs, but just couldn’t get a regular role with the team as either a D-man or a forward. He was traded by the Avs to Calgary in 1999 as part of the big deal that brought Theo Fleury to Colorado, and he wound up finding a niche as a tough guy with the Flames, Toronto, Florida and his final team, Nashville.

He was always very friendly to everyone, and he became something of a media star in Toronto even though his playing time and career exploits were never quite what they were billed as a No. 12 pick. He was funny and articulate, and just a nice guy — as almost all the NHL’s tough guys are.

I always shared something of a kinship with Belak personally; we were both tall red-headed guys who looked a lot alike (at least in my younger days). In fact, I used to get mistaken for Belak all the time, and truth be told, I even signed a few autographs as him because the fans absolutely refused to believe I wasn’t him and I did it just to get them off of me. We laughed about that a lot, too.

I’m sorry that apparently I won’t be able to share any more laughs with Wade Belak, may he rest in peace.

UPDATE: The Toronto Sun has reported that Belak’s death was a suicide — that he hung himself. I feel sick. It’s time for the NHL to do something about NHL’s tough guys — the toughest jobs in hockey — wanting to kill themselves. This is the third this summer. Time for a change.

Terry Frei graduated from Wheat Ridge High School in the Denver area and has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Colorado-Boulder. He worked for the Rocky Mountain News while attending CU and joined the Post staff after graduation. He has also worked at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore., and The Sporting News. His seventh book, March 1939: Before the Madness, was issued in February 2014.

Chambers covers college and professional hockey for The Denver Post. He has written for the Post since 1994, after dumping his first 9-to-5 office job a couple years out of college. He primarily follows the University of Denver hockey team and helps cover the Avalanche.